Part XIII - Paris 1932

Summary

1932 could be called the year of the great mystery but it began ordinarily enough. Housman had been approached by the syndics (a committee whose job it was to advise on and approve publications by the Cambridge University Press). They wanted to publish his editio minor of Manilius. All that remained to be done was a short preface, but he had other desiderata: ‘I have ideas of my own about size of page and print and I also want it to be fairly cheap.’ Although meetings were made possible by proximity it took less than a month for war to break out between Housman and the university printers, and for Housman to be complaining to Sydney Roberts, secretary to the Press, that his ‘overpaid underlings refuse to print my apparatus criticus as I wrote it, and insist on running together lines which I carefully separated, as well as certain signs not of a size corresponding to the type size such as that for omega’.

Coincidentally, Jack Kahane of the Obelisk Press in Paris had asked to produce a deluxe edition of A Shropshire Lad. Richards described Kahane as ‘a writer of semi-improper novels’ and ‘a publisher of more or less pornographic stuff.’ Housman was clear: ‘You correctly suppose that I will have no more editions de-luxe,’ but ‘talking of pornography, you have been remiss about promising me a sight of Frank Harris's last two volumes, for I understand that there are four in all, and I have only seen two.’

At the end of January, he was empathising with Kate about her husband's death.

To me he was a kindly and companionable friend; and your long married life must have been in essentials a happy one, and has ended as in the course of nature it should, by the survival of the younger. In the manner of death we must agree that he was fortunate indeed, and there are many consoling thoughts to heal this sorrow in the course of time.

Kate had decided to move, possibly to Exmouth. Housman was sympathetic: ‘I hope you are tranquil and not depressed.’